iOS 11 Simulator unusable slow

Can anyone post a link as to how to go back to xcode 8? This is very bad. I cannot use xcode 9

Same issue. I have Mid-2012 MBP (non-retina), and my game runs like a slideshow on iOS 11 simulator. But there's two interesting things:

1) UI is still smooth, only graphics (OpenGL) is slow.

2) The same simulators but with iOS 8-10 runs very fast and smooth.

Maybe it's an old hardware problem? Is anyone here have this problem on newer devices (like 2015-2017 macs)?

UPD: digitoid said he has same issue on 2017 mac (https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/83570#262452), so it is not hardware problem.

Same issue here. MacBook Pro 15" 2017. SceneKit. XCode 9 public release from App Store. iOS 11 simulator. Unusable, less than 1 FPS.

I have the latest (2017) iMac with 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM. Xcode 9 crawls. I can't drag a label on a storyboard without the pinwheel and the simulator is painfully slow. I guess I should downgrade to version 8, but not sure what issues that will cause. This is awful. Apple please fix and give us a little update on what's going on.

This is very frustrating. Apple is one of the richest companies in the world and Tim Cooke recently spoke about how important apps and the app store are to their strategy. He talked about sharing courseware so kids can learn to code. Yet, at the same time the development environment is broken/painfully crippled. Please fix this.

Thank you,

Yes, this is totally unacceptable from Apple. Who knows if their reading these comments, one can hope. But man, as others have stated so many times here. To put this update out there... it's just totally beyond the pale to do this to developers. I don't get it. The slowness, the map stuff, the spinning wheel. It's crazy.

mrsilverman, you mentioned a bit ago. How to go back to Xcode 8. I did that today. It's pretty trivial, thankfully. Just go to developer.apple.com and scroll down to more downloads under the Xcode blurb. It'll take you to a page where you can install 8.3.3. Just make sure in Finder to put your 9 maybe in a folder "Xcode 9" or something like that. Once 8.3.3 installs. You can put that in a separate folder. This seemed to work for me for having both installed. However, all that said, not much of a point having 9 open with where things stand.

Come on Apple. Please. Please. Fix this! Here's to hoping we see an update soon.

Thanks. I'm going to downgrade tonight. I cannot work in xcode 9. Apple, please fix.

EDIT: The problem below got fixed by First closing everything. Restarting.

Running the following:

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

Then removing XCode, and re-installing xcode.

Original problem: XCode says Indexing... at the top, and it never finishes. The UI is frozen (Beach Balls of fun). Sometimes it unfreezes, and updates in batch, if you clicked a bunch of times. Then freezes again. I restarted my computer. Restarted xcode. Re-opened my project. Re-ran cocoapods. It does become responsive after opening. Then, when you click build, all **** breaks loose. Just in general tons slower than xcode 8 was.

When / If all indexing finished, clicking on one of the errors in the side panel froze xcode permanently. (Says not responding in activity monitor. have to close)

The build process actually freezes midway on step 242 out of 288 for instance, and sits there for 10 minutes, before i kill it. It actually worked last week, so not sure what changed since then.

Macbook Pro (2015) 16GB, i7 4700. SSD.

Yea, alex_frantic. It's totally unacceptable from Apple.

What your mentioning I too have experienced and at this point. It's been mentioned so many times on this thread. We can only hope that the persistent pounding away here will get their attention.

Whether its the slowness with the indexing, the map slowness, the CPU pegging when running the map in the simulator, the gesture slowness some people have mentioned, etc. It's terrible. I suppose if you have a "simple" project that doesn't use maps or maybe even need to use specif features of the 11 simulator. Then, yea, Xcode 9 can be your friend. Otherwise, if you wanna use it for what it was intended for... like iOS 11. Ummm... no.

In other words, Apple. Where are you? Are you listening to us? When will you reply to us?

Update: This bug is fixed in Xcode 9.1 beta 2.

There is a bug in OpenGLES.framework in the iOS 11/tvOS 11/watchOS 4 Simulators that causes them to skip loading the LLVM JIT and fall back to interpreting shaders. This has a severe performance impact on the Simulator since it is entirely software-rendered OpenGL (this includes CoreAnimation, SceneKit, etc).

As a temporary workaround you can copy libCoreVMClient.dylib from Beta 3 into the Xcode 9 GM and performance should be restored to what it was previously. This must be done for each platform runtime separately. Make sure you do a backup of the old file first, and be aware that each platform has its own unique binary so you cannot copy the same dylib into all three directories (nor can you use the one from macOS).

Did I mention making a backup first?

This is not an officially supported configuration and is only intended as a temporary workaround.

For iOS this is located at:

Xcode[-beta].app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/iOS.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGLES.framework/libCoreVMClient.dylib

For tvOS this is located at:

Xcode[-beta].app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/Developer/Library/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/tvOS.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGLES.framework/libCoreVMClient.dylib

For watchOS this is located at:

Xcode[-beta].app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchOS.platform/Developer/Library/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/watchOS.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGLES.framework/libCoreVMClient.dylib

Russ, thanks for posting this workaround. Unfortunately i no longer have beta 3 around. Could you advise where to get it? Thanks again!

Finnaly! Now my app runs at 12 fps, still better than 0.5 fps 🙂
@smt2ios I used file from beta 1, you can find download links on the internet. I could give you the link or even direct link to the file, but I'm not sure if it is allowed here...

I have filed a very detailed bug report. I suggest that everyone do the same to provide Apple with as much information as possible to fix this.

This is a mission critical problem for me at this point.

I have the same issue in the final release Xcode 9. SpritKit action is very slow in the simulator.

Is this even a work around when you don't give us a link to download an older version of Xcode 9? I'm increasingly concerned about Apple's shocking lack of QA in their software.

Same issue here - XCode 9 iOS11 MapKit rendering too slowly to complete any testing on 2015 model computer.

Also filing bug report.

I have never submitted bug to Apple before, but this time my patience is over. Tim gotta see this thread

If you want a workaround for this problem, try the suggestion from rbishop_apple (see his comment dated Sep 22, 2017 1:28PM starting "There is a bug in OpenGLES.framework" earlier in this thread). I copied libCoreVMClient.dylib from Xcode 9 Beta 3, and MapKit in the iOS simulator is now working great.

Can you post those files somewhere? Because the Beta 3 is no longer available for download.

my problem is with xcode running too slow to use. Just dragging a label in the storyboard causes the pinwheel to spin for 10 seconds each time.

I have found that this problem gets worse the longer xcode is running. So I run it for about five minutes until it gets very slow and then close it and restart xcode then repeat the cycle as needed. Pretty clunky, but it seems to work for me. I just downgraded to xcode 8 for now so I can finish my time sensitive project. I'll go back to xcode 9 once we hear from Apple.

As previously stated, I'm using a 2017 imac with faster CPU and 32GB Ram.

Apple can you please help us? At least provide some kine of recognition of the problem.

Thanks.

You can download iOS 10.3.1 in xcode 9. It's not xcode error but the error from iOS 11. It's fine to me.

Thanks! I followed your advice and @rbishop_apple guidance. I cannot say it works great, just slightly better.

Still waiting for the real solution to this issue

Thanks again

Thanks for posting this workaround. Unlike many here, I've been fortunate enough to be able to put my development aside for a while. I'd been hoping that a solution would have resulted in an update to Xcode by now.

Why, if you guys know what the problem is, haven't you released 9.0.1 or something to address this? Surely you want us developers to be updating our apps to work with iOS 11?! I will be holding off updating my devices and Mac until this has been resolved properly so that when I _do_ return to developing, I'm not stymied like everyone else.

Don't forget: This problem only happens in the iOS 11 Simulator of Xcode 9. You can always download&select an iOS 10.x Simulator and OpenGL based apps runs fine. So no need to downgrade to Xcode 8. Just select an iOS 10.x device on the Simulator list.

Of course this does not help, if you need to run it on iOS 11 (e.g. for optimizing your app for the upcoming iPhone X) - so I would also highly appreciate a bugfix for this - I also created a bugreport.

Yep. If you're using iOS 11 APIs or targeting iOS 11 you are stuck.

Not even finding the file (libCoreVMClient.dylib) on my machine with both Xcode 8.3.3 and Xcode9.0... Above folders doesnt exists either.. What am I doing wrong?